The speech of the damned.

“Always business.” Perry shrugged, a loose easy movement, and I passed my gaze down the small, doe-innocent Trader. He was thin and birdlike, in a white T-shirt and jeans, and he made me uneasy. Most of the time the bad is right out there where you can see it. If it’s not, you have to keep watching until it shows itself. “Welcome to Santa Luz, Henri.”

The Trader leaned into the Ringmaster’s side, and the ’breed put one stick-thin arm over him. A flick of the loose fingers against the T-shirt’s sleeve, probably meant to be soothing, and the parody of parental posture almost made acid crawl up the back of my throat.

“Thank you, Hyperion. This is Ikaros,” the Ringmaster said. He focused on me. “Do you have the collar?”

I reached into a left-hand pocket, my trench coat rustling slightly. Cool metal resounded under my fingertips, and I had another serious run of thoughts about stepping back, turning on my heel, and heading for the Pontiac.

But you can’t do that when the Cirque comes to town. The compact they live under is unbreakable, a treaty between dark and light. They serve a purpose, and any hunter on their worldwide circuit knows as much.

It just goes against every instinct a decent hunter possesses to let the fuckers keep breathing.

Perry rumbled something in Helletöng, the sound of freight trains painfully rubbing against each other at midnight, in some deserted hopeless trainyard.

I paused. My right hand ached for a gun. “English, Perry.” None of your goddamn rumblespeak here.

“So rude of me. I was merely remarking on your beauty tonight, my dear.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. I shouldn’t have dignified it with a response. “The next time one of you hellspawn rumbles in töng, I’m going back to work, the Cirque can go on down the line, and you, Perry, can go suck a few eggs.”